Pub Date : 2022-01-01DOI: 10.5325/jafrireli.10.1.0001
A. Brivio
Abstract:The article discusses the struggle between vodun priests and Roman Catholic missionaries in Togo during the first decades of the twentieth century. I analyze several cases that involved the two traditions and follow the tensions aroused by a new vodun called Goro. Assuming that the Catholic religion is pervaded by the culture of presence, my aim is to show that such religious conflict cannot be fully understood solely as a response to political tensions and personal incertitude engendered by the new colonial order. It needs to be viewed also in the light of a number of concepts that brought the perspectives of the Catholic missionaries closer to those of the vodun priests.
{"title":"Religious Encounters in Togo: Vodun and the Roman Catholic Church","authors":"A. Brivio","doi":"10.5325/jafrireli.10.1.0001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/jafrireli.10.1.0001","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:The article discusses the struggle between vodun priests and Roman Catholic missionaries in Togo during the first decades of the twentieth century. I analyze several cases that involved the two traditions and follow the tensions aroused by a new vodun called Goro. Assuming that the Catholic religion is pervaded by the culture of presence, my aim is to show that such religious conflict cannot be fully understood solely as a response to political tensions and personal incertitude engendered by the new colonial order. It needs to be viewed also in the light of a number of concepts that brought the perspectives of the Catholic missionaries closer to those of the vodun priests.","PeriodicalId":41877,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Africana Religions","volume":"10 1","pages":"1 - 19"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41576720","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-01DOI: 10.5325/jafrireli.10.1.0146
Farah El-Sharif
{"title":"Realizing Islam: The Tijaniyya in North Africa and the Eighteenth-Century Muslim World by Zachary Valentine Wright (review)","authors":"Farah El-Sharif","doi":"10.5325/jafrireli.10.1.0146","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/jafrireli.10.1.0146","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41877,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Africana Religions","volume":"10 1","pages":"146 - 148"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41800815","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-01DOI: 10.5325/jafrireli.10.1.0134
C. Cusack
{"title":"Understanding Religious Change in Africa and Europe: Crossing Latitudes; The Christianization of Jukun of Nigeria and Celtic Irish in Early Medieval Europ by Nathan Irmiya Elawa (review)","authors":"C. Cusack","doi":"10.5325/jafrireli.10.1.0134","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/jafrireli.10.1.0134","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41877,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Africana Religions","volume":"10 1","pages":"134 - 137"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42667426","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-01DOI: 10.5325/jafrireli.10.1.0072
Joshua Matanzima
Abstract:This article examines the forms of knowledge that existed between Africans and Europeans regarding local indigenous religious beliefs, focusing particularly on the case of Nyaminyami, a water spirit that is part of the belief systems prevalent among some BaTonga people of northwestern Zimbabwe. The article briefly outlines the “traditional” BaTonga beliefs and practices relating to Nyaminyami, which were diametrically opposed to those of the Europeans. It then scrutinizes the ways the beliefs have been exploited and appropriated by different interest groups and races from the 1860s to the 1960s. The BaTonga people, who held strong beliefs in Nyaminyami, and European colonists used the idea of Nyaminyami for different social, political, and environmental agendas prior to, during, and after resettlement. Nyaminyami played changing sociocultural and economic functions for the BaTonga people over time. They revered Nyaminyami as their river god in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; they also appropriated the beliefs by rallying behind the river god for protection from their displacement in 1958 following the construction of the Kariba Dam on the Zambezi River. Nyaminyami was also appropriated by European interest groups who used the idea of Nyaminyami to cast Africa as the “dark continent” and to stereotype the BaTonga people as primitive. This article relies on data obtained through a reading of European explorers’ texts and by gathering oral traditions among the BaTonga and Shangwe.
{"title":"Stereotyping, Exploitation, and Appropriation of African Traditional Religious Beliefs: The Case of Nyaminyami, Water Spirit, among the Batonga People of Northwestern Zimbabwe, 1860s–1960s","authors":"Joshua Matanzima","doi":"10.5325/jafrireli.10.1.0072","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/jafrireli.10.1.0072","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article examines the forms of knowledge that existed between Africans and Europeans regarding local indigenous religious beliefs, focusing particularly on the case of Nyaminyami, a water spirit that is part of the belief systems prevalent among some BaTonga people of northwestern Zimbabwe. The article briefly outlines the “traditional” BaTonga beliefs and practices relating to Nyaminyami, which were diametrically opposed to those of the Europeans. It then scrutinizes the ways the beliefs have been exploited and appropriated by different interest groups and races from the 1860s to the 1960s. The BaTonga people, who held strong beliefs in Nyaminyami, and European colonists used the idea of Nyaminyami for different social, political, and environmental agendas prior to, during, and after resettlement. Nyaminyami played changing sociocultural and economic functions for the BaTonga people over time. They revered Nyaminyami as their river god in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; they also appropriated the beliefs by rallying behind the river god for protection from their displacement in 1958 following the construction of the Kariba Dam on the Zambezi River. Nyaminyami was also appropriated by European interest groups who used the idea of Nyaminyami to cast Africa as the “dark continent” and to stereotype the BaTonga people as primitive. This article relies on data obtained through a reading of European explorers’ texts and by gathering oral traditions among the BaTonga and Shangwe.","PeriodicalId":41877,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Africana Religions","volume":"10 1","pages":"72 - 99"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43145958","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-01DOI: 10.5325/jafrireli.10.1.0137
Dawn-Marie Gibson
{"title":"Those Who Know Don’t Say: The Nation of Islam, the Black Freedom Movement, and the Carceral State by Garrett Felber (review)","authors":"Dawn-Marie Gibson","doi":"10.5325/jafrireli.10.1.0137","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/jafrireli.10.1.0137","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41877,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Africana Religions","volume":"10 1","pages":"137 - 139"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43029516","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-01DOI: 10.5325/jafrireli.10.1.0140
Frederick L. Ware
In Theologizing in Black , Celucien Joseph interrelates various bodies of theological literature that are often kept separate. As Joseph explains, his book is a study of Black liberation theology in the United States in comparison to and engaged with African theology and Afro-Caribbean theology. He argues that each of these theological projects are subsumed under Africana Liberation Theology (16, 21). delineated five objectives. book African, African American, and Afro-Caribbean people’s relationship to God the distinction religious experience as the connection between them. the objective, Joseph’s thesis corollary seem to the following: Black experience in religion critical as it has paved the way for thinking theologically or theologizing in black. The idea that thinking to theological musing, and the are inseparable, but not the same phenomenon” (ix). the book in this crisscross of religious experience and theological thinking, what Joseph in black,” the divine-human relationship, as seen the Black perspective, affirms the beauty, dignity, and of Black people
{"title":"Theologizing in Black: On Africana Theological Ethics and Anthropology by Celucien L. Joseph (review)","authors":"Frederick L. Ware","doi":"10.5325/jafrireli.10.1.0140","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/jafrireli.10.1.0140","url":null,"abstract":"In Theologizing in Black , Celucien Joseph interrelates various bodies of theological literature that are often kept separate. As Joseph explains, his book is a study of Black liberation theology in the United States in comparison to and engaged with African theology and Afro-Caribbean theology. He argues that each of these theological projects are subsumed under Africana Liberation Theology (16, 21). delineated five objectives. book African, African American, and Afro-Caribbean people’s relationship to God the distinction religious experience as the connection between them. the objective, Joseph’s thesis corollary seem to the following: Black experience in religion critical as it has paved the way for thinking theologically or theologizing in black. The idea that thinking to theological musing, and the are inseparable, but not the same phenomenon” (ix). the book in this crisscross of religious experience and theological thinking, what Joseph in black,” the divine-human relationship, as seen the Black perspective, affirms the beauty, dignity, and of Black people","PeriodicalId":41877,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Africana Religions","volume":"10 1","pages":"140 - 142"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47553715","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-01DOI: 10.5325/jafrireli.10.1.0129
Alessandra Benedicty-Kokken
{"title":"The Sacred Art of Reading: Spirituality, Performance, and Power in Afro-Diasporic Literature by Anne Margaret Castro (review)","authors":"Alessandra Benedicty-Kokken","doi":"10.5325/jafrireli.10.1.0129","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/jafrireli.10.1.0129","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41877,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Africana Religions","volume":"10 1","pages":"129 - 131"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43331635","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-01DOI: 10.5325/jafrireli.10.1.0047
Marcela Maria Perdomo
Abstract:This article explores the connection between individual experience, religious initiation, historical consciousness, and ethnicity within the context of Dugu, the religion practiced by the Garifuna, an Afro-Amerindian group that originated in the Caribbean island of Saint Vincent. During colonial times, in 1797, the British Crown forced the Garifuna people to leave their homeland; they were displaced to the Atlantic coast of Central America, where they now live in scattered communities. This traumatic event remains entrenched in Dugu and emerges among individuals’ somatic experiences and ritual performance. Overwhelmed, ancestors become visible in dreams and hallucinatory visions and are the instigators of misfortune. Also, the spirits of the dead are believed to act on the bodies of their living descendants by spirit possession. By focusing on some recurrent patterns of possession episodes among the Garifuna people, I argue that particular scenes of a collective memory are embodied by individuals, who evolve from afflicted patients to “living supports” of a historical legacy via initiation.
{"title":"Somatizing the Past: Healing the Dead through Spirit Possession in the Garifuna Dugu of Honduras","authors":"Marcela Maria Perdomo","doi":"10.5325/jafrireli.10.1.0047","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/jafrireli.10.1.0047","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article explores the connection between individual experience, religious initiation, historical consciousness, and ethnicity within the context of Dugu, the religion practiced by the Garifuna, an Afro-Amerindian group that originated in the Caribbean island of Saint Vincent. During colonial times, in 1797, the British Crown forced the Garifuna people to leave their homeland; they were displaced to the Atlantic coast of Central America, where they now live in scattered communities. This traumatic event remains entrenched in Dugu and emerges among individuals’ somatic experiences and ritual performance. Overwhelmed, ancestors become visible in dreams and hallucinatory visions and are the instigators of misfortune. Also, the spirits of the dead are believed to act on the bodies of their living descendants by spirit possession. By focusing on some recurrent patterns of possession episodes among the Garifuna people, I argue that particular scenes of a collective memory are embodied by individuals, who evolve from afflicted patients to “living supports” of a historical legacy via initiation.","PeriodicalId":41877,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Africana Religions","volume":"10 1","pages":"47 - 71"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44286377","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-01DOI: 10.5325/jafrireli.10.1.0100
Ayodeji Ogunnaike
Abstract:The Jamaican government reconsidering the Obeah Act in the summer of 2019 highlighted the legacy of prejudice and criminalization of Africana religious systems and practices left by colonization across ethno-linguistic borders and the broader Black Atlantic. It also highlighted how some traditions such as Béninois Vodun, Candomblé, Santería, and oriṣa worship in parts of Nigeria have successfully managed to combat state policing and prejudice to gain official recognition and legal protection. However, this article analyzes the way even the legal and conceptual success of Africana religions in the modern world places them in a Catch-22. Drawing attention to the fundamental differences between modern conceptions and assumptions of what constitutes “religion,” the article traces the history of how modern political and legal structures either exclude and oppress Africana traditions or exert subtle pressure on them to conform to conceptions of “religion” that are more intelligible and acceptable to their largely Western-based frameworks.
{"title":"Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don’t: The Paradox of Africana Religions’ Legal Status","authors":"Ayodeji Ogunnaike","doi":"10.5325/jafrireli.10.1.0100","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/jafrireli.10.1.0100","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:The Jamaican government reconsidering the Obeah Act in the summer of 2019 highlighted the legacy of prejudice and criminalization of Africana religious systems and practices left by colonization across ethno-linguistic borders and the broader Black Atlantic. It also highlighted how some traditions such as Béninois Vodun, Candomblé, Santería, and oriṣa worship in parts of Nigeria have successfully managed to combat state policing and prejudice to gain official recognition and legal protection. However, this article analyzes the way even the legal and conceptual success of Africana religions in the modern world places them in a Catch-22. Drawing attention to the fundamental differences between modern conceptions and assumptions of what constitutes “religion,” the article traces the history of how modern political and legal structures either exclude and oppress Africana traditions or exert subtle pressure on them to conform to conceptions of “religion” that are more intelligible and acceptable to their largely Western-based frameworks.","PeriodicalId":41877,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Africana Religions","volume":"10 1","pages":"100 - 128"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47769433","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-01DOI: 10.5325/jafrireli.10.1.0142
James a. Manigault-Bryant
(239). In chapter 6, Joseph examines Benjamin Mays’s Black theology, which came to focus on democracy—namely, the democratization of American society and the Christianization of American culture (241–42, 264–65, 270–74). In chapter 6, Joseph builds on his claims in previous chapters that liberation and emancipation are connected to democracy. The reader must ask if this is truly the case. Is democracy the best form of government? What are the risks and fragility of democracy that threaten the lives of Black people? In the United States, Blacks have increased their legislative representation but are plagued by having less legislative influence relative to other groups. Blacks may be facing the dreaded predicament of a “persistent minority” that can never win or carry the day in those matters that concern and interest them the most. They are not alone in facing this predicament. There is uneven political participation and engagement of minority groups generally in American society. According to Joseph, “[Mays] envisioned that the United States could be both ‘a truly democratic’ nation-state and a ‘truly Christian’ society.” In this “truly Christian society,” what is the status of persons who are not Christian? These and other critical questions must be considered by Celucien Joseph and like-minded Black theologians.
{"title":"Black Samson: The Untold Story of an American Icon by Nyasha Junior and Jeremy Schipper (review)","authors":"James a. Manigault-Bryant","doi":"10.5325/jafrireli.10.1.0142","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/jafrireli.10.1.0142","url":null,"abstract":"(239). In chapter 6, Joseph examines Benjamin Mays’s Black theology, which came to focus on democracy—namely, the democratization of American society and the Christianization of American culture (241–42, 264–65, 270–74). In chapter 6, Joseph builds on his claims in previous chapters that liberation and emancipation are connected to democracy. The reader must ask if this is truly the case. Is democracy the best form of government? What are the risks and fragility of democracy that threaten the lives of Black people? In the United States, Blacks have increased their legislative representation but are plagued by having less legislative influence relative to other groups. Blacks may be facing the dreaded predicament of a “persistent minority” that can never win or carry the day in those matters that concern and interest them the most. They are not alone in facing this predicament. There is uneven political participation and engagement of minority groups generally in American society. According to Joseph, “[Mays] envisioned that the United States could be both ‘a truly democratic’ nation-state and a ‘truly Christian’ society.” In this “truly Christian society,” what is the status of persons who are not Christian? These and other critical questions must be considered by Celucien Joseph and like-minded Black theologians.","PeriodicalId":41877,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Africana Religions","volume":"10 1","pages":"142 - 145"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48073619","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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